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November 18, 2016

 

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

 

L.A.'s education board sends a message to Trump: Schools will stay 'safe zones' for students here illegally

Anna M. Phillips, Los Angeles Times

The nation’s second-largest school system on Tuesday sent a message to President-elect Donald Trump: Los Angeles’ public schools will continue to be “safe zones” for students in the U.S. illegally. The Los Angeles Board of Education voted to approve a resolution reaffirming L.A. Unified’s current policy, which directs school staff members not to allow federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents onto school campuses unless their visit has been approved by the superintendent and the district’s lawyers. Board members also seconded a policy that protects the immigration information and identities of students, family members and school staff. Board members also agreed to write a joint letter to Trump “affirming the American ideals that are celebrated in Los Angeles.”

 

Predictions on how the Trump administration could handle ESSA rules

Alyson Klein, Education Week
The incoming Trump administration will likely embrace the local control sprit of the Every Student Succeeds Act—and might move to make big changes to pending regulations, predicted current and former GOP Hill staffers at a panel Monday. Trump and Company will likely “return to a more balanced federal-state partnership,” Vic Klatt, a principal at Penn Hill Group, told those at an Education Writer's Association session. “And I think the education world is going to ultimately go, 'Phew'. No more wacky changes from the federal level.” The Trump administration doesn't need to come up with a whole new framework on K-12, now that ESSA is on the books.

 

Donald Trump has called for the Department of Education to be eliminated — here's how he could legally do it

Abby Jackson, Business Insider
During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly hit at the role of federal government in education, arguing instead for increased local control of schools. He has also hinted that the Department of Education should be abolished. "A lot of people believe the Department of Education should just be eliminated. Get rid of it. If we don't eliminate it completely, we certainly need to cut its power and reach," he wrote in his book "Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America." The education department was created in 1979 through the Department of Education Organization Act passed by Congress. The department's main functions include administering federal assistance to schools and enforcing federal education laws.

 

Teachers are being fired or placed on leave after bringing the election into the classroom

Olivia Becker, Vice News
Teachers around the country are weighing in on the election with varying degrees of appropriateness, and some have been fired or placed on administrative leave as a result of their comments and actions on campus. A faculty member at a Florida high school was put on administrative leave after an accusation that he said “Don’t make me call Donald Trump to get you sent back to Africa” to a group of African-American students gathered in the hallway.

 

Language, Culture, and Power

 

Los Angeles students stage walkouts to protest President-elect Trump

Joy Resmovits, Sonali Kohli, and Veronica Rocha, Los Angeles Times
Thousands of Los Angeles-area high school students walked out of their classrooms Monday morning, streaming into the streets for several hours to protest President-elect Donald Trump. Many were too young to vote but said their futures were at stake and so their voices needed to be heard. They identified themselves proudly on handmade signs and flags as Latinos, transgender and supporters of women’s rights. “A lot of us don’t agree with what Donald Trump is saying,” said Evelyn Aguilar, a 15-year-old sophomore at Collegiate Charter High School in East L.A., who protested in her school uniform. “A lot of people are worried about being deported and violence against them because of their sexual and ethnic identity.” 

 

At Alameda schools, racist graffiti met by mass ‘greeting’ events

Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle
The racist graffiti painted on the walls at Edison Elementary School in Alameda over the weekend was gone, but parents and students refused to let the hateful message linger in anyone’s mind Monday as they lined the school walkway to greet all families with a warm welcome. The racist tags appeared overnight Friday in five places on the school building and were removed Saturday morning. Police are investigating, said school district Superintendent Sean McPhetridge. The crime was one of hundreds of racially charged incidents reported across the country after the election of Donald Trump, including the waving of the Confederate flag at the Veterans Day parade in Petaluma and the painting of the words “Heil Trump” and a swastika near a San Diego bus stop.

 

Bilingual education vote in California another shift from bitter 1990s conflicts

Louis Freedberg, EdSource
The overwhelming approval by California voters of an initiative to end restrictions on bilingual education in its public schools marks another significant shift from the political expressions of racial and ethnic resentments that swirled across the state during the 1990s. Its passage highlights the changes that have occurred in California over the past two decades – the inexorable shift to a multiracial and multiethnic society – along with a realization that multilingualism is a benefit, not a disadvantage, in a world of global communication. With a 72.6 percent yes vote, the passage of Proposition 58 last Tuesday could not have been more definitive. The initiative received majority support in each of the state’s 58 counties.

 

Whole Children and Strong Communities

 

Why kids need recess

Alia Wong, The Atlantic
In Florida, a coalition of parents known as “the recess moms” has been fighting to pass legislation guaranteeing the state’s elementary-school students at least 20 minutes of daily free play. Similar legislation recently passed in New Jersey, only to be vetoed by the governor, who deemed it “stupid.” When, you might ask, did recess become such a radical proposal? In a survey of school-district administrators, roughly a third said their districts had reduced outdoor play in the early 2000s. Likely culprits include concerns about bullying and the No Child Left Behind Act, whose time-consuming requirements resulted in cuts to play. Disadvantaged kids have been the most likely to be shortchanged: According to a 2003 study, just 56 percent of children living at or below the poverty line had recess, compared with 83 percent of those above the poverty line; a similar disparity was noted between black children and their white peers.

 

Firefighting program at high school gives students hands-on training

Fermin Leal, EdSource
Daniel Chambers’ classes at Banning High School in Los Angeles include hoisting a heavy water hose around his shoulders and running around the track, lifting a 20-foot ladder to climb up the sides of buildings, and dressing in heavy fire coats and other gear within one minute. Chambers, a sophomore, is one of 70 students from Banning High enrolled in the campus’ first-ever Fire Academy, a four-year career pathway that will prepare them for jobs as firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians. “I’m receiving training I wouldn’t be able to get almost anywhere else,” Chambers said. The Fire Academy is also part of a new wave of career training pathways that school districts are creating to prepare students for very specific jobs. For example, Los Angeles Unified students can now enroll in pathways such as coding, which was previously under the computer sciences umbrella; radiology, formerly part of the healthcare program; or filmmaking, which was part of the broad multimedia pathway.

 

CSUSM launches art programs to improve childhood learning

Gary Warth, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Cal State San Marcos will launch a series of summits, special events and training sessions aimed at improving literacy through the arts in a new countywide campaign. The program, called ART=OPPORTUNITY, will be funded with a $200,000 grant from the Student Foundation and is focused on providing access to better education for all children and will include technical assistance to implement arts plans, professional development, and mentoring. ART=OPPORTUNITY will be implemented by Merryl Goldberg, executive director of Center ARTES, a university center dedicated to restoring arts to education. Goldberg, a CSUSM professor of music, will be joined by a leadership team of arts educators, professionals and area nonprofits in leading the program.

 

Access, Assessment, and Advancement

 

Remedial classes might be the biggest roadblock to success for community college students

Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
The vast majority of California community college students take remedial math and English classes — but that college-prep work is largely failing to help most of them complete their academic or vocational programs. Eight of 10 community college students first are placed in remedial classes to gain college-level skills before moving to courses that count for credit. But only 16% of those students earn a skills certificate or two-year degree within six years, and just 24% transfer to a four-year university, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California. 

 

ACT offers first accommodations for English-language learners

Catherine Gewertz, Education Week
ACT Inc., announced Monday that it will provide, for the first time, accommodations for English-learners who take its college-entrance exam. The options will become available in the fall of 2017. Students will have to apply for them through their school counselor's office. The accommodations announced Monday include: 1) More time on the test: up to time-and-a-half; 2) Use of an approved word-to-word bilingual glossary (one that has no word definitions); 3) Testing in a non-distracting environment (i.e., in a separate room); 4) Test instructions provided in the student's native language (including Spanish and a limited number of other languages initially).

 

‘The Walking Debt’ protest potential tuition hike for the Cal State system

Carman Tse, LAist
Students from across the Cal State University system gathered in downtown Long Beach on Tuesday and donned zombie makeup to protest a potential tuition hike. Calling themselves “The Walking Debt,” demonstrators showed up early to rally as the Cal State University Board of Trustees met at Chancellor Timothy P. White’s office on Tuesday. Outside of White’s office, the protest organized by Students for Quality Education had one tombstone for each of the system’s 23 campuses, and the Walking Debt chanted “Students not customers!” and “The more we pay, the longer we stay!” “We’re out here telling them this is not acceptable,” protestor Juliana Nascimento told LAist. “Any increase now is already too much.”

 

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

 

Tougher times for Latino students? History says they've never had it easy

Claudio Sanchez, NPR
There's been lots of chatter on social media and among pundits, warning that the treatment of immigrant kids and English language learners is going to "get worse" under a Donald Trump presidency. Some people on Twitter are even monitoring incidents in which Latino students in particular have been targeted. But I wonder: When were these students not targeted? When did immigrant students and their families ever have it easy? People are often surprised to hear that many of these children, with brown skin and "foreign-sounding" names, are U.S. citizens by birth. Yet 95 percent of Latino students in U.S. public schools are American citizens, according the latest survey by the National Council of La Raza.

 

Virginia’s schools are growing more racially and economically segregated

Moriah Balingit, The Washington Post
Virginia’s schools have grown more racially and economically segregated during the past decade, with the number of students attending schools that are considered racially and economically isolated doubling from 2003 to 2014, according to a new report. The number of Virginia schools isolated by race and poverty has grown from 82 in 2003 to 136 in 2014, according to the Commonwealth Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Richmond. The number of students in those schools has grown from about 36,000 to more than 74,000, according to the report, published this month.

 

How discrimination shapes parent-teacher communication

Melinda D. Anderson, The Atlantic
Growing up in Columbia, Maryland, Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng was a self-described troublemaker in grade school. He even got sent to the principal’s office once for in-class misbehavior. But none of his teachers ever called his parents about his school misconduct. In fact, throughout his K-12 schooling, Cherng can’t recall once when a school staffer reached out to his parents. Meanwhile, even though it was customary in high school for the counselor to personally congratulate parents of students who gained early admission to college, his name was left off the call list. And when he complained to his chemistry teacher about the oversight, his comment was met with: “It's not that big of a surprise that you got accepted [to MIT].” Now a sociologist and an assistant professor of education at New York University’s Steinhardt school, Cherng’s latest study parallels his childhood experience by exploring an under-researched topic in parent-involvement literature: the role that students’ race and country of birth play in a teacher’s likelihood of contacting their parents or guardians.

 

Public Schools and Private $

 

When public goes private, as Trump wants: What happens?

Diane Ravitch, The New York Review of Books
The New York Times recently published a series of articles about the dangers of privatizing public services, the first of which was called “When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers.” Over the years, the Times has published other exposés of privatized services, like hospitals, health care, prisons, ambulances, and preschools for children with disabilities. In some cities and states, even libraries and water have been privatized. No public service is immune from takeover by corporations that say they can provide comparable or better quality at a lower cost. The New York Times said that since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms “have increasingly taken over a wide array of civic and financial services that are central to American life.”

 

Charter leader Eva Moskowitz in the mix for Trump education secretary

Eliza Shapiro, Politico
Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of New York City's largest and most controversial charter school network, is in the running to become president-elect Donald Trump's education secretary, a Trump aide confirmed Wednesday morning. The news puts Moskowitz in the company of other education reform leaders like former D.C. public schools chief Michelle Rhee and Center for Education Reform director Jeanne Allen, among others. A spokeswoman for Success declined to comment on whether Moskowitz was considering the position. The very fact that Moskowitz isn't shooting down the rumors could have political implications for the longtime Democrat, who has long had ambitions of running for mayor of New York City.

 

Parents sue to close Red Bank Charter School

MaryAnn Spoto, NJ.com
A group of parents in Red Bank wants the charter school there closed because, they argue, it has created the most segregated school district in New Jersey. The local advocacy group Fair Schools Red Bank and the Latino Coalition on Tuesday asked the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education to investigate the disparities between the borough's public schools and the Red Bank Charter School and take appropriate measures to end what they contend are unfair practices. In seeking a "unified, non-segregated" school district, the groups said the only way to achieve that in Red Bank is to close the charter school.

 

Other News of Note

 

Will Donald Trump destroy U.S. public education?

Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
There’s a reason that people who care about public education in the United States are mightily worried about President-elect Donald Trump. There are, actually, a number of reasons — all of which lead to this question: Will Trump’s administration destroy U.S. public education? The short answer is that he can’t all by himself destroy America’s most important civic institution, at least not without help from Congress as well as state and local legislatures and governors. State and local governmental entities provide most of K-12 public school funding. And there is no appetite in the country for intense federal involvement in local education, which occurred during the Obama administration at such an unprecedented level that Congress rewrote the No Child Left Behind law — eight years late — so that a great deal of education policymaking power could be sent back to the states.

 

 

 

 

Just News from Center X is produced weekly by Leah Bueso, Anthony Berryman, Beth Happel, and John Rogers. Generous support from the Stuart Foundation allows Center X to provide this service free to the general public.

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